Angelina Jolie joins ranks of great action heroes

Salt

By Andy McKinney
Gazette/Connection Film Critic
Mel Gibson has put himself into Hollywood Limbo once again. Bruce Willis is showing his age, and not in a good way.

Who will be the next action hero? Matt Damon will be there at the tiptop of the heap.

It may just be that Angelina Jolie will also be up there. She received a top rank $20 million to make “Salt.” And oh boy, does she ever sell it. She earned every dime.

The acting chore is secondary for Jolie to the task of making a believable killing machine of her body. She works through the athletic stunts, jumping, kicking, hitting and shooting just like the big boys whose ranks she has now definitively joined.

Brian Helgland (“Robin Hood”, “The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3") has created another delightfully puzzling script. We never know if CIA. agent Evelyn Salt-Jolie-is in league with the Russian sleeper agents or not.

Or if she was a sleeper agent, is she still a sleeper agent? In the meantime, Director Philip Noyce, who directed the first rate “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger,” has Jolie running from every law enforcement agency you ever heard of.

Her best pal in the C.I.A. is excellently played by Live Schreiber, who is on TV with “CSI” and who played Sabertooth in one of the “X-Men” movies.

A gang of Russians wants to start WW IV by making it look like an American agent (Jolie) murders the Russian prime minister in New York. The scheme is to provoke a nuclear war and then pick up the pieces. There is a lot of action and clever work to thwart the baddies.

Unknown to the Russian spy master, Evelyn Salt has taken a husband whom she genuinely loves. She must overcome the plot about WW IV in order to save her husband, who has been taken by the bad guys as an insurance policy against her good behavior.

The plot elements are all off the shelf items, but they are done with great verve and style - and at a breakneck speed. We are so busy with the action that we really don’t much care about originality. It is a great, fast ride. Fans of action films will like it a lot.

I did have a concern about the involvement of Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. He produced the colossal hits “G.I. Joe” and both the “Transformer” movies. He has been accused (by me, among others) of having a heavy hand with the special effects to the detriment of character development.

In “Salt” he stays away from the line he has crossed in the past. Most of the effects are up close and personal, with Jolie, running, leaping and jumping from one scene to another.

“Salt” is PG13 rated for violence, but there is no sex in this one. It runs one hour and 39 minutes. Action star Angelina Jolie brings home the bacon in this three and a half saw blade movie.

Still playing is “Inception.” See it on the big screen. “Inception” will be rated a classic in 20 years. It will bend your brain clear out of shape.